“Lisa was a grad student at USC. What was she doing at a little junior college? And on a Sunday.”
“Maybe she wasn't there. Maybe he just left the car there.”
The answer gave rise to more questions but Molly decided not to pursue them. The detectives, she knew, were asking them as well. Does this mean the campus killer forced his way into her car? Or asked for a lift? Why, afterward, would he go directly to another campus? Why that one? Had he left his own car there?
Whatever. Let the police and the FBI puzzle it out. Sooner or later, one piece at a time, they'll close in on him. Or he'll try to gray a decoy, a policewoman. And, if she's worth anything, she'll shoot his pecker off, and then his kneecaps, before her backup can move in.
“Which exit for your father's house?” she asked.
It was a small house, stucco, not much yard, neat, generally modest. He met them at the door. He'd been sitting up, waiting, on the chance that Carla would come tonight. An average sort of man, thought Molly. Might have been nice looking once. Tall, almost her height but gone to flesh, hair more gray than brown. She could see some resemblance around the eyes and mouth but that was about all. Carla must have inherited her coloring and size six from her mother.
He leaned an inch or so toward his surviving daughter. and his hands reached up, just barely. He seemed to want to embrace her. That was Molly's impression. But for some reason, he could not.
Carla mumbled an introduction. Her father did not offer his hand. Rather, he stared at her for a long moment, a measure of surprise evident on his face. Molly was used to it. She did not look like what she was. But then few of them did.
“I've made a fresh pot of tea,” he told them.
It was not an invitation to enter. Not exactly. Nor did he step to one side. It was more like saying that if his daughter wished to come in, he would try not to make her feel unwelcome.
The living room was comfortable, very California, furniture that was a sort of Ethan Allan Spanish, fake beamed ceilings, lots of plants. There was a piano in one corner. Molly tried to imagine Carla, as a little girl, practicing on it.
Atop the piano there were several framed photographs. One frame was empty, its photo probably given to the police. There were three other pictures of Lisa, taken at various ages, one with her mother, now deceased. There were none of Carla.
Molly knew most of the story. Carla had gone to Europe nearly twenty years before, junior year in Paris, met a guy, an Algerian, who studied electrical engineering by day and made bombs at night. By the time Carla caught on, so had the French Secret Intelligence Service. She was given the choice to work for them or to go to prison, more likely to vanish. By then she was ready to get even with almost anyone. Stayed for four years until she hooked up with Bannerman and he managed to get the French off her back. Nobody messed with Bannerman back then.
But for those four years, and the fifteen that followed, George Benedict had never seen her, had hardly heard from her. But he heard about her. Mostly from the CIA when they were building their file on her. They told him stories. Like the one about the Algerian engineer who she blinded with a ballpoint pen on a crowded street in Rome and then stood by watching as he staggered, screaming into the path of a trolley. The Algerian's new address had been a gift from Bannerman.
“Miss Farrell,” he said, awkwardly, as he poured her tea. “You are,ah... from Westport as well?”
She knew what he meant. “Yes. I am.”
“And you've been back in this country how long? Almost four years?”
“Just about. Yes.”
“Well,” he sighed audibly, “it's nice that you took the time to come see me.” He flicked a glance toward Carla, then quickly looked away. He filled her cup. The tea was yellow, Carla noted. Smelled more like straw.
“And when, Carla,” he asked, still not looking at her, “did you last find time to call your sister?”
”A week ago Thursday,” she said evenly.
He raised an eyebrow. His lips curled. Both doubt and scorn.
“And the week before that.” Her eyes began to shine. “And almost every week, not counting visits, for the past ten years.”
“That's a lie,” he said through his teeth.
“And I sent her money,” she hissed, “and paid her tuition, and I gave her that white car for her twenty-first birthday. Fuck you, George Benedict.”
His color rose. He shook his head, slowly, still disbelieving. “She had a scholarship,” he said firmly.
“That's right. I set it up.”
His head shook again. His lips moved wordlessly. He seemed to be repeating what she said to him. “She would have told me,” he said at last.
Carla leaned forward. “You told her you never wanted to hear my name again, George. You got your wish.”
He closed his eyes. Molly saw moisture forming on the corner of the one farthest from Carla. He had turned his head so that Carla could not see it.
“Mr. Benedict,” she said gently, “if there's anything we can do . . .”
“No . . . thank you.”
“We can help with the arrangements. Make calls to friends and relatives.”
“They all know. The newspapers, the...''He gestured toward his television set.
“Have you seeN her?” Carla asked. Her manner had softened.
He nodded, shutting his eyes again.
“When will she be . . .” Carla rephrased. “When can we have her?”
“Tomorrow, I think. They were doing an autopsy today.”
Carla became quiet. She had, she realized, hoped to see Lisa before the cutting began, having blocked from her mind the knowledge that the most terrible cutting had already been done. Abruptly, she reached for her purse and stood.
“We're staying at the Beverly Hills,” she said to her father. Then, after a pause, “Will you be okay?”
“Some neighbors are coming over. They'll stay the night. Otherwise,” he said, looking at his hands, “I'd ask you to . . .”
“I'll call you tomorrow,” she said.
“Go ahead. Say it.” They were back on the San Diego Freeway. Carla stared out the side window.
“It's none of my business,” Molly said quietly.
“You think I was a shit, don't you?”
Molly shrugged. She said nothing.
“When I was twenty, I met this guy in Paris.”
”I know. Paul told me.”
“He told you what happened?”
“That one thing led to another, yes.”
She was silent for a long moment. “They let me call my father. I told him I was in trouble. I asked him to come.”
And he didn't, Molly gathered.
“He said I've made my bed. I should take my medicine. It's the chickens coming home to roost. He probably would have said that a stitch in time would have saved nine but I hung up on him.”
Molly offered no comment.
“Christ.” Carla let out a breath. “Have you ever met a man named George who wasn't a turkey?”
Molly said nothing.
“It wasn't the first time, either,” Carla said.
“What wasn't?”
“That I got in trouble, and he changed the locks.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Nothing big. I beat up some girl who was giving me too much crap. And I got arrested a couple of times during demonstrations. Vietnam stuff. And I got pregnant twice by one of my professors. Had a bad abortion the second time. That was when I got shipped off to Paris.”
”Um ... in fairness, Carla . . .”
”I know. I was not every father's dream.”
Molly steered for the exit ramp at Sunset Boulevard.
“Go straight.” Carla touched her arm. ”I want to see Lisa's apartment.”
“Where is it?”
“Huntington Park, down past the USC campus. Twenty minutes, tops.”
“You have a key?”
Carla patted her purse. “I've been out here a few time
s. I've stayed with her.”
Molly swung onto the ramp. “I'm going to bed, Carla. We'll go in the morning.”
Carla started to argue but a yawn stopped her.
“What does your father do?” Molly asked, to draw Carla off that subject.
Another yawn. “He's retired. He used to be with the water company.” Where they're probably all named George, she thought.
Molly nodded. It sounded as if he'd made a living but not much more. A modest house. A widower on a pension and social security. Not likely that he could have put Lisa through USC and then graduate school. Lisa, probably at Carla's urging, had spared his pride by lying to him about a scholarship. He might never have learned otherwise if he hadn't started sticking pins into Carla.
“Molly?”
”Uh-huh?” Ahead, all pink and lit up, she saw the facade of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“You're as tough as I am. How come nobody ever thinks you're a shit?”
“I'm not so tough. But there's tough and there's mean, Carla,” she said, not unkindly. “There's a difference.”
Carla dropped her eyes. She didn't speak for several moments. Then, ”I wish you'd known Lisa. She didn't think I was mean.”
“I'm sure that's true. And I do wish I'd known her.”
Carla fumbled for a tissue. She turned her face as her father had. Molly reached for the back of her neck and squeezed it.
“I'm not always mean,” she said, shuddering.
”I know.”
“Do you like me? Even a little?”
“We've kept each other alive, Carla.”
“So has penicillin. That's not what I asked.”
Molly had to smile, although a bit sadly. Paul had told her about their talk on Compo Beach. That she felt she'd lost the only person who cared about her. And that she might be dangerously brittle for a while, and would need some hand-holding.
Paul had been tempted to come himself. But, he realized, every time he leaves Westport, someone, not least the U.S. intelligence community, begins to wonder what he's up to.
Anyway, she could handle it. She, and Paul, had dealt with this sort of thing, or something like it, a dozen times over the years. Contract agents are all a little crazy. And most of them had spent the better part of their lives doing unto others first. Retiring them, making new lives for them, trying to integrate them into a nice, laid-back community like Westport had taken some doing. Teaching
them that you don't break some teenager's legs for throwing beer cans on your lawn or for trashing your mailbox, although maybe you torch his car if he makes a habit of it. But also teaching burglars, swindlers, and drug dealers that they'd be better off working some other town if they didn't want to be found in a trunk just over the Westport town line.
Some of them had needed more teaching than others. Old Billy McHugh, for example, had always been a loner. They'd assigned him a job as a bartender at Mario's so he could get used to being around people. It had seemed like a good idea; he made a lot of friends. But then he had to be taught that just because you make friends, and you find out that your new friends have enemies, like divorce lawyers and such, who are treating them badly, you don't go out and solve their problems for them. Billy had solved eleven problems before Molly began to notice that the local suicide and accidental death rates were climbing well out of proportion to the population.
Carla hadn't done anything like that. But, once, she caught a young thief trying to steal her car radio and she did things to him that Dracula wouldn't do. Left his screwdriver sticking out his colon. Paul had to explain to her that, while he did not object in principle to the defense of her property, he was concerned that such total devastation of a burly male by a very small woman might attract undue attention.
And then, last year, there was that mission to Spain. To Marbella. Carla had done her job. Neutralizing a team of shooters who had ambushed Elena Brugg's car and killed Doc Russo. No arguing that. But the way she'd done it, carving up that Englishman, taking her time, had even made Billy McHugh wince. Not that anyone should have been surprised. She and Doc Russo had been close. But afterward, she had withdrawn from the rest of them more than ever. And they, in turn, avoided her as if she were a live grenade. It was months, after Marbella, before any of them asked her to dinner, or to play bridge, or take in a movie. Even Paul thought it best to give her time, leave her alone. And that was wrong. It wasn't what she needed at all.
”I trust you,” Molly said, pulling into the driveway of the hotel's main building. She took Carla's hand. “And I care about you. I know that's not everything you want to hear but . . .”
“Never mind,” Carla shook her had. “It's okay.”
Molly tried again. “Maybe we're overdue for a talk.”
“About what?”
”I don't know. Things. Nothing serious. Isn't that how people get to know each other?”
”I guess.”
“We'll order up some wine. We'll talk until we fall asleep.”
No answer.
Molly tugged at her. “Want to try something? Let's pretend we're fourteen again. At a pajama party.”
Carla rolled her eyes. “Give me a break.”
“We'll call out for a pizza. Or some Roy Rogers chicken.”
Carla chewed her lip. “Could we . . .”
“Whatever you'd like. What?”
“Could we ... stay in the same room?” Carla's voice became small. “Just for tonight. I'll take the floor if you want.”
Molly squeezed her hand. Then, the doorman approaching, Carla withdrew it. A little schmoozing was one thing, she thought. Looking like a couple of dikes to this putz was another.
That same evening, Monday, marked the passage of twelve long weeks since Barbara Weinberg came to Sur La Mer as Bonnie Streicher. And one week since the night when Nellie Dameon spoke to her.
The three months had been a time of study, of surgical procedures on her face and body, and of boredom. For several hours each day, she and Axel . . . Alan. . . attended classes, listened to tapes, watched films, learned to be Jewish.
Soon, during the fourth month if all went well, they would emerge as Barbara and Alan Weinberg. Their features, their patterns of speech, would be vaguely Jewish. There had also been a two-week attempt to alter Alan's accent, make it a bit less German, more continental, like her own. But he had lapsed almost immediately. The accent was not terribly pronounced in any case.
They would not be religious Jews.
To be religious, to be active in their faith, might have required additional months of training. It would be enough that they could pass as people who had lived their lives on the edge of Jewish culture and tradition.
It was Carleton Dunville, the younger, who had recommended this option from among the several identity packages available to them. It was highly unusual, he pointed out, for a Christian to use a Jewish alias. And, therefore, an advantage. Most people, he said, tend to stereotype those they meet, at first meeting, as long as they are provided with a category. When you meet a divorce lawyer, a politician, or an Englishman, for example, you promptly apply certain preconceptions to him. If you think twice about him, wonder about him, you tend to do so within that context. Accordingly, he said, the category in which you place yourselves provides instant protective coloration. A Jew was a good thing to be.
If they insisted on remaining Protestants, he said, they could do so provided they chose some denomination other than their own and provided that it, again, carried certain stereotypes. The born-again variety, for example. Or the southern Baptist. But these, he felt, would tend to limit their circle of friends because many who did not share those faiths would judge them to be potentially tiresome and they, Axel and Bonnie, would find their new soul mates even more so.
Better to be nonreligious Jews, he said. Yes, your friends would tend to be other Jews...all the better for camouflage . . . but, presuming no latent anti-Semitism on your part, that will also have its own rewards. You will find them warme
r, wittier, more well-read, and better conversationalists than most.
Your faces, he said, will be significantly altered but, never fear, you will not become caricatures. Axel's hair will be darkened and restyled, his lips somewhat thickened, and something will be done around the eyes. His nose will be made thicker across the bridge and slightly crooked, as if once broken. Facial moles will be removed and an interesting scar will be added. His jaw, now square and jutting, will be broken and reset and the chin reduced. The result will be a face that is oval in shape and a profile that is not at all reminiscent of Axel Streicher.
Mrs. Streicher, he said, will become a blond. Her nose would be fixed as well. It will be made not Jewish but almost too perfect, as if a Semitic feature had been surgically corrected. Her two most arresting features are her breasts and her eyes. The breasts are easily reduced. The eyes, violet in color, can be muted by tinted contact lenses and the lids can be made to conceal a bit more of them. All teeth, his and hers, will be newly crowned in order to render previous dental records useless for purposes of identification.
For both, new wardrobes will be selected with an eye toward their new coloring and toward the avoidance of any known preferences in dress. Virtually all habitual brand preferences—clothing, cosmetics, cigarettes—will change. Bonnie will learn new makeup techniques. Surgical alteration of vocal cords is a possibility but first, said Dunville, we will see if a therapist can effect a satisfactory change in the pitch and cadence of your voices.
The Streichers were impressed. No detail was too small for the Dunvilles and their staff. First names were chosen that began with the same letter as the names they replaced in order to minimize slips of the tongue.¯They were to use these names exclusively. There was no more Axel, no more Bonnie. They were Alan and Barbara Weinberg. Their training would begin at once. Moreover, their contract provided for refresher courses after their release. Two in the first year and one annually four years after that. Attendance was mandatory. Dunville would even provide relatives. Alan Weinberg would have an aunt and uncle living in Fort Meyers, Florida. Barbara Weinberg would have parents who had moved to Israel and a cousin living in New York. A three-day briefing by their stateside “relatives” was scheduled for the second month of their stay at Sur La Mer. Upon graduation, they would fly to Tel Aviv for a two-week visit with Barbara's parents. These relatives, Bonnie presumed, were Sur La Mer alumni as well.
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